The last time

This is the last time I will write. I don’t think I shall be talking about it much either – too boring once it’s over and past. As I said to A* in one of our skype conversations I haven’t learnt the sort of things I expected to learn and maybe some things I won’t realize I have learnt until I get back.

 

 

• I am glad I did it sooner rather than later. I thought it was going to change my life. Maybe it will yet, but living through the year was painful. The placement was largely unrewarding. One wonders why they ever wanted someone in the first place. It took 8 months before my contacts began to bear any fruit. My experience was mirrored by most volunteers, especially in the group when I first arrived where it just seemed utter chaos and you were left to sink or swim. Most were sinking. I do debate whether VSO think they have any duty of care to volunteers.

 

• Most Cameroonians suffer from inadequate parenting. Face to face with African adults you get a sense that they haven’t had their child needs met. This leaves them without inner resources to draw on in crisis. Instead they resort to the worst rigidity, excesses and betrayals of their parents. My closest relationships here cast me in the role of a mother.

 

• I became an old, sexless person out here. That was miserable, uncomfortable and dull, but very safe!

 

• People who volunteer are not intrinsically interesting. The majority are extremely clever, like to lead, like power and authority and/or are natural loners. I seemed to be the only person who missed sex. Alcohol features for some to excess. Team working as I know it was non – existent. I saw traits in myself played to their bitter end in my colleagues and I didn’t like what I saw. Approximately 80% of VSO volunteers are women.

 

• There is something blessed in a life lived mainly outdoors, that is not consumed by 9-5 and being places on time. Stopping just to cogitate for an hour and have a cold beer became heavenly. I am suited to African time. I can not see myself choosing to work full time again.

 

• Beautiful, endless African landscapes, starry starry nights, golden sunshine, pools with water lilies rising out of desert in the rainy season, the sweetest sheep, goats and cows that roam the streets and live amiably alongside man.

 

• Being at ease in an environment where I am the only white person and admiring black beauty in male and female form.

 

• I am not a trite materialistic person at core, whatever my detractors may have said, and can live contentedly, in difficult conditions, on very little. I have also had an unforgettable lesson in what living on very little really means to people who have no escape. My reading/ living the reality has shown me that this is the Fourth World. They are not developing. They are destitute.

 

• I found out who really missed me.